For those of you with zoning/loading/crash issues, please read!!!

[Korbian]

A couple of notes from Cipher on the Discord, for those of you who don't use it...

 

To those who are experiencing issues connecting, changing zones, and entering / exiting missions:

 

If you are on Wi-Fi and have the option of using Ethernet, then please try that before reaching out to the team. If your problem persists over Ethernet then please reach out to me in a Discord DM w/ your OS version and region.

 

Thanks!

 

A quick addendum to those who are experiencing issues connecting, changing zones, and entering / exiting missions:

 

If you know how to and are willing to provide a pcap / wireshark dump during which the issue you are experiencing occurs then we would greatly appreciate it - it'll help us investigate the cause of the network / connection issues some people are currently experiencing.

 

If you're going to create a pcap / wireshark capture, I would recommend closing as many networked applications as you can before starting the capture, both to limit the amount of data that is potentially captured in the dump, and to reduce the file size.

 

Please do not post the link to the capture in a public setting - DM it to a Homecoming Team member on Discord or send one of us a private message on the forums.

 

(Note - we have reached out to our host to have them investigate possible issues on their end as well!)

 

Thanks!

 

 

 

Edit:  From Discord announcements on 6/20/19...

 

We're looking into issues with character transfers. If you are seeing issues with them, please post any information you may have in #report-server-issues-here . So far the problems we are aware of are:

 

1. The 'busy' message appears.

2. Not all shards appear as valid transfer targets.

 

Before posting in #report-server-issues-here , please attempt to restart your client. This has historically corrected numerous issues with character transfer. If it does not resolve your issue, any information you can provide would be helpful.

 

---

 

We're aware there is a long-standing issue where for many players it takes well over 30 seconds to load the character select screen (almost every single time, not occasionally).

 

This is not normal or expected behavior and we have been working to diagnose it for some time. If you are encountering either the above 'busy' message or missing shards in the transfer target list, please include in your report if you are affected by the extremely long time required to load character select.

 

And there is a thread and a request from Cipher for people experiencing this issue.

[Korbian]

Bumping in case anyone is still unawares.

[Widower]

Doing you one better and stickying.

[Korbian]

My first ever sticky!  *blush*

[_NOPE_]

PHRASING!

[Healix]

[the_visviva]

So is there a thread here or on Discord for any updates on this as it occurs (already sent pcap file to Cipher in Discord)? Happy to be patient, just want to stay up on this.

[Trascon4EB]

I'm having this problem only when exiting missions. After 3 or 4 missions the game freezes or kicks me back to login screen.

So I downloaded and installed Wireshark...

But what to do now? What filter do I use?

Are there any guides related to CoH?

 

 

 

[gilce]

Not sure this has to do with the network since though I am experiencing zone loading issues, I have solved them withoutnetwork tweaking.

 

I am playing with my wife. She's on a laptop with wifi while I'm on a wired desktop and I noticed her changing zone faster than me. With the exception of Atlas Park, I am back to the login screen after a long loading time for most zones (sometimes I even have to log out the game to launch it back in order enter the new zone). I noticed my wife is playing full screen while I am playing in windowed mode so I try playing full screen and I have no longer any trouble changing zone.

 

The only problem I have now with playing full screen is when I want to log out, I have to set the game back to windowed or I often get a black screen with no choice other than shutting down the computer and rebooting it.

 

This leads me to a kind of routine when playing CoX : launching the game in windowed mode and when I have to enter my credentials, up to when I am in Atlas, I switch to full screen. And when I want to log out, I switch back to windowed mode else I often have to reboot my computer.

 

I have no trouble whatsoever with any other game, mmorpg or not, older or newer and I often play in windowed mode. This is the only occurrence when I have to stick to that sort of routine.

 

If it was a mere network issue, changing the screen mode would do nothing while in my case it is a fully functional workaround (and I am still able to use my second screen for whatever need I may have outside the game).

 

 

[Korbian]

Not sure this has to do with the network since though I am experiencing zone loading issues, I have solved them withoutnetwork tweaking.

 

I am playing with my wife. She's on a laptop with wifi while I'm on a wired desktop and I noticed her changing zone faster than me. With the exception of Atlas Park, I am back to the login screen after a long loading time for most zones (sometimes I even have to log out the game to launch it back in order enter the new zone). I noticed my wife is playing full screen while I am playing in windowed mode so I try playing full screen and I have no longer any trouble changing zone.

 

The only problem I have now with playing full screen is when I want to log out, I have to set the game back to windowed or I often get a black screen with no choice other than shutting down the computer and rebooting it.

 

This leads me to a kind of routine when playing CoX : launching the game in windowed mode and when I have to enter my credentials, up to when I am in Atlas, I switch to full screen. And when I want to log out, I switch back to windowed mode else I often have to reboot my computer.

 

I have no trouble whatsoever with any other game, mmorpg or not, older or newer and I often play in windowed mode. This is the only occurrence when I have to stick to that sort of routine.

 

If it was a mere network issue, changing the screen mode would do nothing while in my case it is a fully functional workaround (and I am still able to use my second screen for whatever need I may have outside the game).

 

Oooh, I would love to see some other folks test this fix.  If it can be duplicated it might give the PTB some indication of where the problem lies.

[Tommy Cortex]

I can confirm this.  For the past few days, I've been playing in fullscreen mode and haven't experienced this issue since.  Weird, huh?

[Trascon4EB]

Just finished dinner, time for some coffee and a nice smoke in the back yard, send my wife and kids to the living room for a good netflix nght and then I'm gonna try it in full screen. Hope for the best!

[Trascon4EB]

Well, this seems to solve my problem.

About 10 missions on a row in full screen and no problems at all!

Even zoning goes a lot faster now.

Can't believe this is all it took.

 

Hooray!  :D

[Healix]

YAYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!! GRATZ!

[the_visviva]

Nope.

 

Does not work for me. I was full screen to begin with. I tried playing with the graphics (turning them down even though that should NOT be necessary for the machine I'm running).

 

I had luck once or twice when I'd go from full screen TO windows, and minimize my window when loading. But even that wasn't consistently reproducible (just worked a couple of times). I re-downloaded everything from scratch, set "cityofheroes.exe" to run in Win7 compatibility mode (w/ run as admin). I've played with graphics resolution a bunch and lower resolutions MIGHT work a bit better, but are NOT reproducible (works a few times to load, but not every time, and the same for zoning).

 

I can keep playing with graphics settings and work-arounds, but I think there is something else wrong that can be exacerbated or partially alleviated by some graphics settings.

[the_visviva]

It might be on my end, or it might have started working again on it's own (as it has before).

 

Short description: I might have a bad memory slot

 

Long description:

I've had on again/off again issues with RAM on this PC. I upgraded from 8GB (4x2) to 16GB (8x2) almost as soon as I got it (actually I think as soon as I got it). Ran into a lot of memory management errors and BSOD. Ran an extended diagnostic on it, and there was a problem. I Brought back the RAM (they also ran and extended diagnostic) and sure enough, it was bad. Got a replacement set (same brand). And all SEEMED good. The problems resurfaced though eventually. I went BACK to the original RAM and again I thought I had it licked. I ran CoH with BOTH sets of RAM by the way (not the bad set I returned, but the original out-of-the-box and the final replacement) and had problems with both. On a whim, I put in one of the 8GB sticks, and left the 2nd slot empty. It seems to work now. So maybe the problem is the 2nd slot.

 

 

[Trascon4EB]

Still running smooth in full screen...

No crashes, no hick-ups, no kick back to log in.

Me so happy!  :)

[dillon87]

Let me just say NOTHING here is helping. I've had zero issues until this morning up until now. I keep getting a "No MapServer" error after doing a mission or even trying to load in the game it's extremely slow and always freezes a bit after each load screen. I even tried re-validating the game files. What is going on?????????

[BattleTalon]

Still having the issue myself, I'm afraid.  I submitted a ticket, but I can't respond to it because I can't cut and paste or attach pictures of the console code they asked for and it's too long to type out.

 

In addition to trying the fullscreen trick mentioned above, I uninstalled and reinstalled tequila and Homecoming, as well as adding them to the exceptions list for Windows Defender.  Worked well for about 15-20 minutes, but it still stalls out finding the dbserver periodically when zoning/loading in for the first time.  Sometimes it will start up fine, but the moment I hit a mission door, it can't find the dbserver.

 

Edit to add:

 

I tried the ping tests mentioned in this thread:  https://forums.homecomingservers.com/index.php/topic,2027.0.html

 

The 40.67.254.36 IP address timed out.

[RagManX2]

If you are on Wi-Fi and have the option of using Ethernet, then please try that before reaching out to the team.

 

This was the solution for me. Nearly 4 hours playing over a wired connection without a single zone-loading failure. I do have a failed zone loadings captured via Wireshark that I will try to share with the team, but I can play wired until this problem is fully identified and correctable (I'm blaming my Killer WiFi card/driver until I hear otherwise). Wife won't be happy when she returns from her conference to see the cable running to my seat in the living room, but a fella's got to get his game on.

 

Thanks for this advice!

[billy2hawks]

Are you still looking for wireshark PCAP captures? I am on Wifi and playing in full screen. I am seeing drop issues when I go into/out of zones with more players.

 

Let me know, and I will look at setting up PCAP/Wireshark to have a look and generate some logs.

[excessionoz]

When this problem first started, I was 100% reliable connection to Reunion server (EU), and very flaky to NA servers (Torchbearer, Everlasting etc).  The unreliability was found when zoning (the progress bar would not move, eventually messages like 'no DBServer found' or 'No Mapserver found'. 

 

Then it would let me logon, but upon selecting any character on any NA server, it would freeze.

 

I originally got by this problem by using a VPN connection, (NordVPN) setting it to Canada, and that would occasionally work reliably for a session, but the next time I connected via VPN I experiences the 'no DBserver' nonesense.

 

Eventually I used my cell phone internet connection over a WIFI->USB adapter, and it worked flawlessly, every session was fine, 0 disconnects, 0 'DBServer errors' and 0 No Mapserver.

 

Switching back to my cable internet provider, and all the problems came back.

 

This situation continued until early July, when it seemed to be resolved.

 

Again, the problem resurfaced in the past four days.  Logging on would lead to a character list that was non-responsive.  A different session, I could logon my character but going to the Supergroup base would 100% fail with No Mapserver error.

 

Switching from my normal internet to cell internet (different internet service provider) and the problems go away.

 

There is all this nonsense advice being offered of updating drivers / reloading windows / turning off antivirus / modifying files / reloading manifest / reloading entire game, and that doesn't help.

 

100% of the time I can connect reliably to the EU server.  Which is in a different country.  The datacentre or network setup in Canada seems (to me) to be the culprit.  My cable internet is pretty solid, 90Mbps download 35Mbps upload, and is perfectly reliable for streaming youtube, netflix, and playing other network games.

 

I have tried a wireshark capture, but I have zero idea how to read the information it offers. :/

 

[rovain1]

i have a friend who was playing just fine a few days ago then it stopped working what it does is loads tequila once u hit play it brings up the loading bar for CoH but nothing else uninstalled it redownloading all the files still same out come no bangs in firewall or antivirus stuck on how to fix it any adv would be help thanks

[Cheetahka]

Can anyone please make a guide on what to do with wireshark? I want to capture so I can post in hopes of fixing my constant disconnect aka  Lost connection to mapserver

 

here is where I downloaded it from. I selected all the check boxes when installing it as well.  https://www.wireshark.org/

[billy2hawks]

So, looking at this problem. I have it on two machines that have completely different hardware.

 

One is a Dell laptop, the other is system I built myself. U have the same problem on both machines. The laptop is wireless, and the other is hardwired. Now you might think, hey, it is your connection, but you would be wrong. I have two more machines my kids play on, and they work just fine. They are running on Dell optiplexes that are wireless.

 

I was thinking, hey, it might be the router or connection until I took the other two computers into account. The ONLY thing I can think of that is common is my account. I guess I could try to play on my kids account for a few hours to see if it might crash on me.

 

The funny thing is, it will work fine for an hour or so, then go through a series of crashes. I pull a tracert to Google every time it crashes, and 80% of the time, I am seeing decent pings to all the hops.

 

Are there separate servers that the accounts are stored?